The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

The big increases in rights fees for the National Football League recently agreed to by ESPN and the broadcasters begs the question: In the TV ecosystem, who wins and who loses?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

First and foremost, recall why the networks ponies up so much money in the first place: of the top ten programs (single telecast) in 2011, nine were NFL games or related content. Number one was the Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers on Fox, which drew a rating of 37.7 with over 111 million viewers. This year's title game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots is expected to get even more viewers.

A brand-new report from Barclays Capital (see below) goes through a lot of analysis and comes up with this answer: NFL programmers because they will be able to extract higher fees from Multiple System Operators and affiliates while networks that do not own football programming will have a difficult time getting fee increases.

This is good for shareholders of Walt Disney (ESPN), CBS, Comcast (NBC) and News Corp (Fox). Bad news for shares of the non-sports rights holders, like the Discovery Channel, Scripps Networks Interactive and Viacom.

The report also predicts that to offset the rights cost increases MSOs will attempt to pass on the costs of carrying NFL programming to the consumer and if there is a subsequent consumer backlash the operators may end up absorbing some of the programming cost increases themselves.